John Stanley Plaskett
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John Stanley Plaskett (November 17, 1865 – October 17, 1941) was a Canadian astronomer.
He worked as a machinist, and was offered a job as a mechanician at the Department of Physics at the University of Toronto, constructing apparatuses and assisting with demonstrations during lectures. He found this so interesting that at the age of 30 he enrolled as an undergraduate in mathematics and physics. He stayed at the university until 1903, doing research on color photography.
His formal astronomical career did not start until 1903, when he was appointed to the staff at Dominion Observatory in Ottawa. His achievements are all the more remarkable for this very late start.
He measured radial velocities and studied spectroscopic binaries. His mechanical background was very useful for constructing various instruments.
He became first director of the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory in Victoria, British Columbia in 1917 (not to be confused with the old Dominion Observatory in Ottawa).
His son, Harry Hemley Plaskett, also pursued a very successful career in astronomy, winning the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1963, thereby making the Plasketts one of the very few families to boast more than one Medal winner. [1]
Contents |
[edit] Honours
Awards
- Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (1930)
- Bruce Medal (1932)
- Henry Draper Medal (1934)
- CBE
Named after him
- NRC-HIA Plaskett Fellowship [1]
- Plaskett crater on the Moon
- Mount Plaskett [2]
- the Plaskett Medal [3]
- Asteroid 2905 Plaskett (with his son H.H. Plaskett)
- Plaskett's star
- Plaskett Place (street on which he built his home, in Esquimalt, British Columbia)
[edit] References
- ^ "Presidential Address on the Award of the Gold Medal to Professor Harry Hemley Plaskett" (1963). QJRAS 4: 176.
[edit] External links
[edit] Obituaries
- MNRAS 102 (1942) 70
- Obs 64 (1941) 183 (one paragraph)
- PASP 53 (1941) 323
